Aibu to think it was not possible for Carole Middleton to engineer her daughters marriage?

[Bahhumbug23]

https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/royals/carole-middleton-master-plan/

Kate was staunchly middle class. The royals are notoriously snobby. Aibu to think that Carole did not & wouldn't be capable of engineering this? How the hell would she be able to do this?!

I bet a lot of families/people try.

@Thepeopleversuswork how did they do it? How did they leave no stoned unturned?
All these claims are being thrown about with no examples except about Kate switching uni & gap year.
A masterplan on this scale would have been concocted at birth eg like Richard Williams (Venus & Serena's dad)

My impression of St Andrews is that it is considered one of the “posher” universities if you’re not quite Oxbridge material. Therefore Kate would certainly have stood a stronger chance of meeting a very rich, possibly titled husband there but, as to the rest, I think there were too many unknowns to ensure it was William.

Everyone saying UCAS doesn't work like that is missing the point that Kate had already accepted a place in 2000 to study at Edinburgh. When William announced he was going to St Andrews and having a gap year, she literally withdrew her application and reapplied for St Andrews the following year. It was a risk as she had no guarantee of a place, but she only did it after she knew William was going to St Andrews (before that people were predicting he'd go to Edinburgh).

This is survivorship bias of course (there were dozens of girls who tried and failed to marry William but we don't hear about them) but she definitely took considerable steps to give herself much better odds of marrying him. If she'd gone to Edinburgh maybe they'd have been a million to one, but by changing to St Andrews she reduced it to 1000 to 1, and then by making sure she infamously hung around at the same places dressed sexily, she might be down to 100 to 1 etc.

But he applied to do /started doing History of Art. I remember because there was much excitement in the HofA department at my uni at the time.

Call social services, terrible parenting!

Being cynical, if you were going to design a woman who'd be attractive to William:

Tall and slender, pretty, with dark-lined eyes, like his mother
Gently spoken
Good with small children
Extremely discreet - good at playing the statements wife
Not pushy, well-behaved when drunk
Sporty/active
Kind, understanding, good listener

Kate is either a naturally good fit for that role or underwent an early personality transplant.

A pushy parent would have coached her hard in how to behave when they broke up in the mid 2000s.

You're right - classic breeding ground for "Tim, nice but..." without being Oxbridge material.
Having said that, Charles got into Cambridge with 2 A-levels and no grade A :o)
Oh, and his bodyguard who went to all his lectures with him got a First and C didn't!

Mrs Brown, more like.

It amazes me how folk come up with such shite.

@Mikimoto "You're right - classic breeding ground for "Tim, nice but..." without being Oxbridge material."

You might want to check the St Andrews entry requirements and academic standing before you talk about " nice but dims" 🤣

Really this would be impossible to pull off even if true.Kate is an attractive girl who probably had many admirers .How anyone could "engineer" a relationship in this way is pure speculation .Chemistry between 2 people is not guaranteed , there are a thousand reasons why there is an attraction .Trying to portray Carole Middleton as some sort of modern day Mrs Bennett is simply mad!

That’s exactly what I was wondering, too.

Of course they couldn't guarantee it, but they could certainly make it more likely. Go to the right school, mix with the right people, attend the right university, go to the right parties, act demure and wifely and unthreatening... it's what the upper classes have always done with their daughters

Kate was meant to go to Edinburgh. She swapped to St Andrews when it was announced William would be going there. He was initially studying history of art like her, though he later swapped to geography. She tried to go on the same gap yah Raleigh trip as him. She was known as the limpet among his uni friends because of her refusal to leave his side. I mean to be fair to her it did work, she's going to be queen.

It's not shit though is it. These are facts and I'd agree she was the sucessful one of probably very many. She is clearly very intelligent and level headed. Is it really so many miles away from dressing to impress ? How much her mother helped her we will never know, but I would do everything I could to help my 17yo realise their ambitions.

Yep. She did a few months on and off at her parents' friends' company but made it clear that her attendance at work would depend on William's wishes. Good job it worked out for her really because she's not done a hard day's work in her life.

Everyone saying UCAS doesn't work like that is missing the point that Kate had already accepted a place in 2000 to study at Edinburgh. When William announced he was going to St Andrews and having a gap year, she literally withdrew her application and reapplied for St Andrews the following year. It was a risk as she had no guarantee of a place, but she only did it after she knew William was going to St Andrews (before that people were predicting he'd go to Edinburgh).

That was the point she had to have the grades needed for St Andrew course to get accepted, be prepared to take a gap year probably less an issue for her family with their money - and take a risk she may not get a place - then get in his orbit and be liked by him.

It's far from a fool proof impossible to fail plan orchestrated entirely by her mother to snare the heir to the throne.

Wasn't Mountbatten described as engineer of Queen and Prince Philp's marriage - and Queen mother and maternal GM of Dina behind that marriage - despite that GM having pulled her DD out of school and pushed her to marry into Spencer family after her lodger got engaged to heir - I don't think they've had half the flack directed at them as Carole Middleton has.

And like someone else said, the booby prize is marrying Giles who will go on to be a successful lawyer on £500k a year (and maybe you'll end up good friends with the Prince and join him on cosy skiing holidays to Val D'Isere)

@TripleDaisySummer erm, but that's exactly the point I made too? It wasn't foolproof, but that doesn't mean they didn't take steps to make it more likely

More materially, if she had it's wildly unlikely that anyone would have confided in Scobie about it. It's purely speculation on his part.

No-one can "make sure" of getting a place on a particular course in a particular university. All you can do is apply and hope to get in.

But the reality is that he's the lucky one.

As I said upthread she is clearly bright and presumably studied hard at her very prestigious school with small class sizes and every other material advantage. She chose to use her A-levels to throw herself in his path. I don't think that can be in doubt.

I guess it's more engineered in the way of entering your daughter into a series of The Bachelor, but it would never be guaranteed that her daughter would win against all the other girls who had also been entered into The Bachelor. So not completely engineered- just attempted.
How would they know which course W was doing and get put into the same one though? You have to apply by January and how would you know what he had applied for?